


Rewrite

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: The world of ruin has been cleansed, the Accursed banished, the starscourge purged, and all of Eos has a second chance to heal. But the people don't remember what it is they're healing from. Noctis wanders through a world that no longer recognizes him. Not his friends, not his father, and not even the one man that swore he'd never forget him.





	Rewrite

**Author's Note:**

> written for an anonymous request [here](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/172940789347/ooh-heres-a-prompt-reincarnation-au-and-nobody)

_“What are you doing up here?”_

_“Oh, you know. Just dealing with the idea of my own irrelevancy, living in a world that only wants to put up with me until it’s ready to dispose of me.”_

_“You too, huh?”_

_He was a man with the eyes of a boy. He could see his face so clearly now. He could trace every detail, count every pore, every eyelash, every strand of hair, and every fractal of light that shivered in his eyes like constellations._

_He sat down next to him, high above the spires of somewhere. He was less certain about the place than he was about the person. The city was always in mist, an endless rise of black monoliths receding into the fog like ships on a haunted sea._

_It never mattered. He didn’t have eyes for the city._

_“What do you think would happen if we just jumped out there and kept going?” the familiar stranger asked, aiming a hand out to the horizon as if he could pull himself to it, across buildings and sky and sea, without ever touching ground._

_“A whole lot would happen, if you went. Me… No one would even know I was gone.”_

_“You know that’s not true.”_

_“Yeah… But they’d be better off.”_

_He took his hand, pulling himself along the edge they sat on to press close, his fingers starlight smooth over the rocky callouses of his ruined palms. He always kissed him like it was the last one. He held onto him so tightly that it ached. He kissed him hard enough to bruise. To bleed sighs between his lips and sip the taste of him between his own. Gods, he could have kissed him to death, if only to kiss him into the eternity oblivion promised._

_“I wouldn’t be better off without you,” his boy-king said, all the weight of the world in the shadows of his infant eyes. “You would destroy me. I could never forget you. You would be on my mind every day. I would wonder where you were, if you were happy, if you missed me…”_

_“I couldn’t miss you,” he whispered, clutching his hand until his starlight burned into his skin. “Because you would be right there with me. I would take you away from all of this. I’d have the whole world hate me, if I could just steal you away with me.”_

_He smiled._

_So simple._

_So perfect._

_So beautiful._

_But then he cried. All the stars in the sky cascading from his eyes as he held him._

_“Promise you won’t leave me behind?”_

_“I promise…”_

He woke up before he could hear himself say his name. They always ended the same. No matter where they were, no matter the promises they made, he couldn’t hear his name.

He remembered him so vividly when he closed his eyes at night. But once the day came, he forgot his face. He lost count of the pores, the lashes, the locks of hair… He forgot what they talked about, the promises they made, how he’d made him cry… The dawn broke through his window every morning, and all he could remember was that he’d dreamed.

* * *

Two miles away, smothered deep in a dingy apartment, Noctis sobbed into his sheets.

If he could have been allowed anything in the next life, he wished for all of his damn dreaming to end.

* * *

“Look alive, Nyx!”

Libertus always gave the bare minimum of warning before he slammed Nyx with the heaviest box off the truck. It was just enough time for Nyx’s wayward thoughts to scramble like a just born baby chocobo to catch up with the load before it hit the ground.

“You are going to get us into so much trouble one day,” Nyx grumbled as he hefted the box against his chest, bottlenecks tinkling gently inside.

“Me? You’re the one who’s never paying attention.”

“Hm, what? Were you talking? Sorry, I must not have been paying attention.”

Libertus flipped him off. Nyx pretended that he wasn’t paying attention to that, either.

“You two almost finished farting around back there?” Crowe called, leaning out the truck window to better brand them with her pending fury. “Heavens help the both of you if I’m late to this thing.”

“The fact that you have to call a date a thing.” Libertus rolled his eyes. “I think we should be asking the heavens to help _you._ ”

Crowe leaned on the horn to let him know just how she felt about his prayers. And Nyx knew that was their final warning for picking up the pace before she decided to throw the truck in reverse.  He and Libertus dragged down the last of their order and as soon as she heard the loading door bolt shut, Crowe revved up the engine and stormed onto the highway with barely a wave out the window.

“Damn, never seen her so serious about a date before,” Libertus said, waving goodbye at the dust cloud left in the wake of her wheels.

“Must be one hell of a girl.”

“Must be.”

Libertus clicked his tongue against his cheek, ever the over-protective skeptic of any person in the whole wide worrisome world being good enough for his little Crowe – no matter how big she got.  Nyx patted him on the shoulder while Libertus contemplated Crowe’s romantic life and failed not to have an existential crisis about it. There would be time enough to grill Crowe on her “thing” when they weren’t being drowned underneath the rapids of a busy Friday night.

Nyx dragged two boxes to the back door and hurried them behind the bar. Libertus would catch up when he finished stewing. In the meantime, Nyx filled in the shelves beneath the bar and got back into the rampant flow of filling orders.

The Hearth was warm with music and voices and flushed faces. The lights were soft and the tables were full, the woodsy creak and croak of the cedar boards underfoot a whispered reminder of the wild woods of home. Wood-smoke from the fireplace curled around the rafters and slid from cracked windows into the damp spring chill outside.  The doors were open to breathe out the stale winter air and welcome wanderers in to revel.

It was a lively place, not a rowdy one. A little pub to lounge after a hard day’s work, to kick your feet up and toast with friends to surviving another week.

That was always the case with the three regulars at the front window table. Every Friday, without fail, it was the city event planner, the librarian-by-day/self-defense-coach-by-night, and the plump stock photographer.

Ignis was always there first, six thirty sharp, and he always ordered three drinks in advance. Sometimes Gladiolus was second, hair still damp with a cooldown shower at the end of a lesson running long. Sometimes he caught up with Prompto on the way and they both came in at the same time, the photographer hugged underneath a massive tattooed arm. Sometimes Prompto was the earlier one, sometimes Gladiolus was the later one, but without fail, every Friday, they were always there. No matter the time, no matter the weather, no matter what. They didn’t miss it.

“Extra order of Cheesy Chocobo Fries,” Nyx announced as he started on his rounds. “Celebrating something tonight, boys?”

“Other than the invention of melted cheese is? That alone is worth celebrating to me.”

Gladiolus snatched up the basket to share with Prompto, both of them plucking up seasoned fries dripping with golden cheese like they were selecting nuggets of gold from a celestial altar. Ignis rolled his eyes and took a sip of his beer, uttering a quick “nothing else, thank you” to dismiss Nyx onto his next patron.

“Refill for you?” he asked of the dark stranger in the corner.

“No, thank you.”

When Noctis smiled, it never touched his eyes. Not that Nyx could see them enough to tell. The man kept his face down-turned most of the time, full eye contact a rare phenomenon that Nyx couldn’t remember seeing since the first night he came in.

His visits were infrequent, but his habits were consistent enough that Nyx could remember his name, his favorite seat, and his preferred order. He always came alone, always claimed the corner table, and always dressed as black as a shadow, melting into the dark like he didn’t want to be seen. Libertus had been nervous about him the first time he saw him. But Nyx braved his table and took his order and knew that he was harmless.

“Clear those away for you?”

Nyx gestured at the two empty shot glasses already overturned on the table. Noctis silently shook his head, staring at the remaining thimbles of amber liquid like he was waiting for them to tell him a secret.

He always ordered four shots. No more and no less. He didn’t come to drink and ramble his woes away to the bartender on a loosened tongue. He didn’t come to meet people or mingle. He just sat, and he stared at the full glasses in front of him.

He was the pub enigma. He was quiet, but always the perfect paradigm of politeness. Sometimes, he closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side like he was listening for something. Nyx could never hear what it might be. He always tipped far more than even Nyx felt he deserved. And he was always the last to leave. Otherwise, there was no rhyme or reason to his visits or his habits.

And, Nyx thought, there was no reason he should be drinking alone. Not with a face like that, sculpted like a stone figure from antiquity. Not with hair that long and luscious and dark. Tangled, though; scruffy and unkempt. He didn’t put much effort into his appearance – not that he needed to do much anyway, Nyx thought.

“Alright then. If you need anything, just wave me down. Okay?”

Noctis flickered a glance towards him, the briefest glimmer of contact. Just enough for Nyx to see how sad his eyes always were. Sometimes he’d blink up at Nyx as he brought him his order, and it felt like he was dying. He always looked like he was on the verge of crying out for help, always on the cusp of one more word that he never said. His lips would quiver, and Nyx would wait, and then they’d press together, Noctis ducked his head, and he would quietly ask for the check.

The man was a mystery. There was a story hidden behind each gesture, tragedy steeped deep behind his eyes.

Nyx knew that he shouldn’t be as interested in him as he was. He knew that Noctis’s puzzle was not his to solve – he didn’t even know the man. But curiosity had often gotten the best of Nyx – as well as the worst. He didn’t know how to leave well enough alone. Libertus always teased that it would get him killed one day, if he wasn’t careful.

Nyx didn’t think today was that day.

“Right up ‘til closing tonight, huh?” Nyx teased when Noctis walked up to the bar to pay his tab.

It was late, the pub emptied, the small fire in the hearth from which the place derived its name simmered down to embers. Nyx had let Libertus head home an hour ago, if only not to have him breathing down his neck about how crazy he was to try asking out a stranger that Libs was convinced was a hitman on the run.

Noctis shrugged, fishing through his jacket for his wallet. “Nowhere else to be,” he mumbled, just for the sake of small talk, and setting Nyx’s unsaid questions afire.

“Would you like to be with me? For coffee sometime?”

Noctis paused. His brow furrowed, eyes down at the mahogany bar between them.

For a moment, Nyx feared that he’d been too bold, too abrupt. He hadn’t exactly worked his way up to this in the traditional sense. It was hard to flirt with so few words exchanged between them. It occurred to him only too late that maybe he should have taken his silence for a sign that Noctis wouldn’t have been interested even if Nyx did express explicit interest. Maybe he was making a fool of himself. He certainly felt foolish, wondering so much about a stranger that likely just wanted to be left alone.

“Why?”

Noctis looked up at him, one small lift of his chin like the greatest struggle. (Nyx hoped it wasn’t just his face that Noctis didn’t want to look at.) There were a hundred things going on in his eyes. Suspicion, confusion, regret, even hope. It stunned Nyx to the spot, forgetting that he was expected to give an answer. He gulped down the nerves and the emotive intensity of that secretive stare, and tried for a smile.

“Why does any single guy ask another attractive single guy out for coffee? I’d like to get to know you better.”

Noctis looked ready to ask him why again. Like he couldn’t comprehend why someone would want to get to know him. That made Nyx feel as sad as Noctis’s eyes looked.

“I’m sorry,” Nyx said, leaning off of the bar. “If you don’t want to, it’s fine, of course. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable…”

“You don’t.”

Noctis held his gaze, the longest he’d ever let Nyx look into his eyes. For just as long as it lasted, it ended all too fast, dropping back down to the bar like he couldn’t think straight unless he was looking at something inanimate. He turned over Nyx’s proposal for a long time, glancing at odd points around the pub that Nyx couldn’t quite decipher – Noctis’s table in the corner, the front window table where the regulars usually sat. There were so many pieces to where his eyes fell. Nyx thought he might go mad trying to put them together.

“Coffee,” Noctis murmured. “I can do coffee.”

* * *

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

Harder, even, than watching everyone’s lives move on without him.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he woke up inside of the most perfect dream. The light returned, the world awake, and him, allowed to walk out of his room to see it all.

He should have known the second he stood up that it was all too good to be true.

He should have known when he walked through a city, untouched by ruin, and missing all signs of the royal sigil; no statues, no newscasts, no Caelum name on any building. He should have known when every stranger he passed by on the busy sidewalks looked right through him, like he was anyone else in the crowd.

Cor was the first one to break his heart. He was chief of police, easy enough to find. He’d nearly clapped him in cuffs and thrown him in a cell by the time Noctis had finished begging him to remember who he was.

He walked into Ignis one day. His oldest friend merely brushed past his shoulder, with a lightning-quick apology, and went on his way. It was the same with the others. If they saw him, it was through him, passing him in the next line over for groceries, handing him fliers for their businesses, or bumping shoulders on the train through the city.

He didn’t try to find his father after that. He knew that it would end the same way.

He couldn’t take that.

He could barely take it when he saw Nyx, and Nyx didn’t see him.

All he’d ever wished was for everyone to stop looking at him. All he’d ever wanted was to stop being seen for his crown.

_Be careful what you wish for._

He knew that he was just torturing himself when he went to the pub. He knew that he shouldn’t be there, didn’t belong there. He didn’t belong anywhere.

It was so hard to listen to his friends, two tables over, laughing and teasing and talking about their lives, so much happier without him in them. The first night he’d sat there he’d had to run to the restrooms to throw up.

No one even noticed he’d left the room.

He was starting to forget, too. He didn’t remember how to be Noctis. For all that he’d felt lonely in his life, he’d never really been alone. There had always been someone there.

His father had held him through his nightmares. Luna had grounded him through her letters. Cor had protected him, Ignis had played with him, Gladio had fought with him, Prompto had laughed with him, and Nyx…

He’d tried to wear his hair the way he thought Nyx would remember. He’d tried to spike it up and cut it just right, and hoped so badly that he would see him again. That any of them would. Eventually, he stopped trying. He stopped cutting his hair, stopped shaving his beard; stopped trying to be the Noctis no one remembered.

He knew he shouldn’t come to the Hearth. He knew he shouldn’t stay in a city that was no longer Insomnia. He knew that he was just killing himself by listening to every joke shared between his friends that he didn’t know the punchline to.

He knew that he would die if he looked up one more time at Nyx’s crooked smile and not see himself haloed in his eyes.

But he didn’t know where to go. He didn’t know how to be by himself. All this time, he’d thought he’d had so much practice with loneliness. But that had never been the case at all.

The closest he could get to his friends was through ordering four glasses, and pretending he could sit at their table to toast with them.

When Nyx asked him out for coffee, he felt his heart break for the final time.

It was all gone.

He would never have him back like he was. He would never tuck him under his arm in their tiny little apartment, never run his hand through his hair the way Noctis loved because he couldn’t remember how. He would never kiss him on his neck, tickle his chin with his scruff, drag his hands along his back with magic fire beneath his palms, or race his tongue along the breaths he trapped in his mouth. He would never call him by his secret names, whispered like little prayers in his hair or cried out against his throat with the moaning of the mattress beneath them.

It hurt.

The agony of being forgotten, by the people he’d confided every part of his heart to, was indescribable. He felt as lost as a child in the woods, crying out to shadows for anyone to find him. He’d tried praying to the Astrals that had forsaken him for dead. He’d tried calling on the Messengers that had so faithfully defended him in his dreams.

All he got for his prayers were nightmares. Every sweet memory was these days.

He said yes to Nyx because how could he refuse him? How could he look into those eyes that had cherished him as everything he’d ever wanted to be and not give himself to him completely? How else could he survive this purgatory if he didn’t start again?

“You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

Nyx had just finished closing up for the night, pulling all the blinds on the windows and doors, locking everything up, and lowering the lights. Mood lighting, Noctis thought, whether he was right to think so or not. Ambience to soften his tumultuous thoughts. He never knew if Nyx was really that psychological, or if he just liked the low lighting. Whatever the case, it always comforted them both. How could he remember that and not that he was in love with the man standing right in front of him?

“I’ve had a lot to think about,” Noctis confessed.

“Any of them good?”

Nyx leaned against the bar beside him, arms crossed against the dark wood, a compliment to his coppery skin. He still had all his tattoos, all the delicate little loops of ink that defined who he was and used to entrance Noctis to trace into the waning hours of day. He still wore his hair in braids, still carried his body with the same, confident grace, proud to wear his heritage for all to see.

He still smiled at Noctis like he was the only thing in the world when they were alone.

He knew that this was wrong. He knew that he was lying to him every time Nyx asked him about his life. Over crappy coffee that they would pretend was gourmet, Nyx had asked him everything, and Noctis could tell him nothing that was true.

Noctis tried to make the most of it where he could. He tried to see it all as a blessing instead of a curse. He got to fall in love with Nyx all over again. Hopefully, Nyx would fall in love with him again, too. Maybe he could get through it that way. Maybe, in time, he’d forget his old life like it was a bad dream. Maybe he could be just like the rest of them, start all over again with them. Maybe he could survive his memories that way.

He tried to smile. He tried to laugh. He tried to reciprocate Nyx’s affections without slipping into it all like he’d done it before. Like he didn’t know where Nyx’s hand would fall when they were walking along the boulevard. Like he didn’t know all of his favorite places to visit, like he didn’t know how he moved when he danced, like he didn’t know all his tells for when he was about to lean in and kiss him.

His eyes grew soft, lids hung low, the slope of his neck curved to incline his face closer. There was a quiet tension to every muscle of his body, every line pulled taut to smooth over the nerves he never wanted to show.

Noctis didn’t know what it would do to him if he kissed him. He didn’t know if it was wrong to let him. By the time Nyx had cupped his face and pressed his lips against his, he still hadn’t figured out if it was right.

How could he forget this? How could he erase the hundreds of kisses collected in his memory? How could he not compare each one of the past to each one to come? He couldn’t pretend like kissing Nyx wasn’t as innate of an action as breathing. He couldn’t keep himself from opening up and slipping in close and fitting himself to his body because he knew that he belonged there. He knew that he _fit_ there, he knew that Nyx was home. How could he pretend like he was a stranger in his own home?

“Damn,” Nyx gasped, pulling away too soon for how deeply Noctis craved to have him back. “This isn’t too fast for you?”

Noctis shook his head, grabbed Nyx’s face, and kissed him hard. He didn’t care if it was too fast. He didn’t care that he was throwing himself at him now. Nyx wanted to kiss him, whether he remembered him or not. Noctis just wanted to kiss him back. He just wanted something familiar.

He recognized the way Nyx touched him in ways he shouldn’t. He knew the natural instinct Nyx had to hold his hips when Noctis wrapped his arms around his neck and dipped his body along his front, sinking beneath his hands like he was pulled to anchor. He knew how quickly Nyx’s hands would catch up with his brain when he felt the heat from Noctis’s body pressing into him. How he would slide around the cup of his ass and grip his thighs to lift him onto the bar-top.

Noctis couldn’t fake it. He couldn’t act like every reaction he felt to his touch wasn’t honed from years of letting him rove the planes of his skin and unravel every secret Noctis didn’t even know he kept. Nyx righted himself between his legs, Noctis squeezing his thighs against his hips and keeping him flush against him. And kissing, always kissing, he never wanted him to stop kissing him.

He was sick of the space between them. He was sick of being forgotten, of being looked at like he wasn’t there. He knew it was stupid, and selfish, and childish, even. He knew that he shouldn’t be angry at Nyx or his friends or his father. He knew it wasn’t their fault. But _how could they forget him?_ How could _Nyx_ forget him, after all they’d promised each other?

Nyx made a noise, low in his throat and rumbling in Noct’s. His hands gripped hard in the footholds of Noctis’s back, unwittingly firing the starving synapses of his skin, crying out for the old touch. Nyx nipped along his lips between kisses, as possessive of a lover as Noctis knew him to be. If only Nyx knew that he’d been possessed by him for a lifetime already.

Nyx stepped one foot up on a shelf beneath the bar to lever Noctis down to the counter. One strong, tattooed arm braced against the small of his back, hitching up the hem of his shirt. Noctis felt the bar-top like ice against his skin. Nyx drove a hand through Noctis’s hair, twisting and tugging and swallowing him with kisses. He pulled his head back to kiss along his neck.

Noctis felt the tears in his eyes then, overwhelmed and devastated by how perfect it felt, and how wrong it all was. Nyx kissed him and touched him like he’d never felt him before. Noctis kissed him and caressed him like it was the last time he’d ever get to.

“Nyx… Please…” _Please remember me._

Nyx grunted distractedly, hearing his begging differently than Noctis wished he would. He traveled his kisses down, lavishing chapped lips in the crook of his shoulder and his collarbone. He dragged his hand from his hair and Noctis let his head loll back against the edge of the bar. He rushed his arm over his eyes and tried to force the tears back as Nyx canted his hips against him and wrestled his shirt up his chest and…

His kisses froze, and Noctis felt his entire body seize above him. Nyx’s arms braced against the bar, shaking; a strangled sound caught on his lips.

When Noctis looked, Nyx was staring in blank horror at the jagged brown mark on his chest. A cruel reminder of the sacrifices made for Eos. His greatest terror that Noctis would be made to remember alone.

Noctis didn’t understand what was happening when Nyx’s eyes glazed over. He wouldn’t know until many hours later. Because then Nyx’s eyes rolled back and his arms gave out from under him, and he collapsed unconscious right on top of Noctis.

* * *

When he woke up he remembered the dreams.

And he remembered that they weren’t dreams at all.

It all bolted through him in one sharp shock. Like being struck by lightning, all he could do was stand there and let it happen. Wait for the electricity to turn to static. Wait for his heart to start beating again.

His name was Nyx Ulric. He’d always known that part. He just didn’t know the rest.

His name was Nyx Ulric, and he was a soldier of the Kingsglaive, sworn to the service of the 113th ruler of Lucis, King Regis Lucis Caelum. He was born in the islands of Galahd, displaced to the Crown City of Insomnia with the assault by Niflheim forces under the order of the Empire. His sister was Selena. She’d died in the attack. Libertus and Crowe were his comrades in arms. They wielded the King’s magic to protect Insomnia from Imperial daemons. Nyx’s last mission was to rescue the Princess of Tenebrae and Oracle to all, Lady Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, from Imperial capture. He’d died to help her escape the city.

And underneath all of that, he’d been in love with a prince. He’d made promises on skyscraper rooftops to the heir to the throne. He’d blasphemed against the Astrals the Prince was promised to at birth. He’d made a lover of his future king, unrepentant in the kisses they shared, the secrets they told only to each other, and the sacrilegious pacts they made in his bed.

His name was Noctis…

“Noct?”

He remembered the bar. He remembered running his hands against wiry flesh, remembered his legs coiled around his hips, remembered how he curved his body so close and devoured all the space between them like he was only ever made to kiss Nyx, and thinking that was so _hot._

Then he saw the mark on his chest. And he remembered everything.

Noctis sat perched on the bed next to him, blinking down at him in bewilderment. Nyx remembered that he looked different now. Older than when he’d last seen him. His hair was grown out, a beard on his chin, and his eyes… He knew all their secrets now. He knew why they were so infinitely sad.

Nyx sat up fast and reached for him. He wanted to kiss away all the time that had passed since he’d forgotten him. He wanted to make up for all the trials he’d gone through since leaving the city and Nyx hadn’t been there to love him through it.

Noctis recoiled.

“You… remember me? _Now_?”

Nyx blinked. He stared at him. Gods, it was so good to look at him again. He’d missed him since the day he’d left. He’d missed him even when he didn’t remembered. He missed having him in his arms… Why wasn’t he?

“Yeah, Noct,” Nyx said, breathless with the revelation.

He untangled himself from the bedsheets, in his small apartment just a stone’s throw from the Hearth. Had Noctis dragged him all the way there? While it wasn’t far, it wasn’t exactly a distance one would want to go with a hundred pounds of dead-to-the-world Kingsglaive on their shoulders.

Nyx didn’t have time to wonder about that. He wondered about Noct. _His_ Noct, who was standing apart from him like he was afraid of him. Who was standing in the center of the room shaking, fists curling at his sides, the edges of his eyes red with tears.

“All this time,” he said, voice strained over knots of anger and anguish. “After all that… I know it’s not your fault but… You _forgot_ me… You promised… You weren’t supposed to leave me behind.”

Nyx’s heart dropped to the bottom of his chest. He could see all the hurt pushing out from Noct’s eyes. Nyx could see time he couldn’t count compounding itself into tears that Noctis was too tired to cry. He could see rage he hadn’t allowed himself to feel because it wasn’t fair to. He could see the pain of all the loneliness they’d spent so much time fighting together. He could even see the betrayal that Noctis knew he was selfish and stupid for feeling because it wasn’t any of their faults and yet….

Nyx didn’t know what to say. He was just as angry, just as confused, just as _scared_ that it had been so easy for his memories to be plucked from his brain and discarded…

But they weren’t. Not really. They were always there.

“Noct,” Nyx pleaded, time uncountable erasing itself from between them. “I’ve dreamed of you every night. I missed you before I ever met you.”

Noctis looked at him, eyes he’d been hiding that were so full of sorrow over a lifetime none of them could remember. They overflowed, cascading with the stars Nyx remembered in his dreams. He remembered what happened next. He remembered that he would open his arms and Noctis would come to him and they’d catch onto each other’s broken pieces.

Noctis fell like thunder against him, both of them crashing to the floor. He held on so tightly that he could have bruised, nails digging into his spine, arms trembling with the effort. Noctis sobbed against his chest, a dam of all his heartache broken up to wash against Nyx’s shores. He held him hard through it, pressing his face to his hair, holding his face close, and hiding him away from a world that had only ever wanted to dispose of them.

He’d promised he’d steal him away from it.

This would have to do for now.

* * *

“What’s next?”

He wasn’t even sure which one of them had asked the question. It was on both of their minds.

Noctis must have cried for hours. He didn’t remember when he’d stopped. When he did, he’d opened his eyes to find himself wrapped around Nyx like a child with a stuffed chocobo, both of them laying on the floor and staring at the ceiling and wondering how in all the hells they got here.

It was nighttime. The city whispered outside Nyx’s window. The moonlight cut bright between the buildings, no Wall to filter it through.

Noctis listened to Nyx’s breath, his heartbeat pounding steady against his ear where he laid his head against his chest. He didn’t want to hear anything else. Not questions, not even answers. He just wanted to hold onto this and never let it go. He wanted to believe that it was real.

“I can’t tell Libs,” Nyx whispered in the dark. His eyes were bright and a little bit dazed in the moonlight. “Or Crowe. She died… _I died._ ”

Noctis squeezed his shoulder and his leg that he’d wound both of his own around. He pressed his face into his neck and held him through the long, horrified shudder of remembering how he’d died.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Very much.”

Guilt pressed like dark clouds around Noct’s brain. The wound on his chest looked like it was there since birth. _Born to die_. He wondered if that was Bahamut’s sanctimonious poetry at work.

He wondered if he should find his father. He wondered if it wouldn’t be fair to make him remember. If it wouldn’t be fair to make any of them remember. He knew that it was selfish. He knew that he shouldn’t try to insert himself into the lives of people that looked much better off without him.

Part of the pain of living without them had been knowing how wrong it would be to pretend he deserved to have them back.

“I hate this,” he whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”

Nyx hugged him close. He didn’t have an answer for him. Everything was all tangled up and messy, history and feeling and future all in knots. There wasn’t a right answer. Not for everyone, at least.

“I’m sorry.”

_I’m sorry I forgot you._

“Me too.”

_I’m sorry I made you remember._

They were quiet again, merely reveling in the nearness Nyx hadn’t known he was missing and Noctis had only ever begged to have back. There was so much to say and no words either of them could find to say it. Things were still hard, having this knowledge of a life bred of magic and prophecy and sacrifice. Not really a life at all.

The world was a second chance now. Nyx had never known it was. He wasn’t sure if he valued it more now that he did. He resented it a little, for thinking he could restart without Noctis. He wondered if it was really a gift to the rest of them, or if it was a prison for Noctis.

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter now. He remembered everything. Whether they made the rest of the world remember, it would take them a while to decide. But for now, they had each other, and Nyx remembered the most important thing he needed to.

“I love you, little king.”

Noctis gulped down the knot in his throat. He didn’t have any more tears to cry. Instead, he huddled close and held Nyx tight and didn’t let go again.

“Don’t you forget it, hero.”


End file.
